


above coping

by Bluebluebaby



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe- 70's Skate Culture, F/F, She was a skater girl, She was also a skater girl, can i make it anymore obvious, girls who skate amen, slowburn with angst and an eventual happy ending i guess, steve is a bit of a shitbag so fair warning on that front, yeah the title is a pun fucking DEAL WITH IT
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29053599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluebluebaby/pseuds/Bluebluebaby
Summary: 70's Skater AUJudy Hale has somehow managed to turn a skate rat adolescence into an honest-to-god living at the age of 19. She's used to being the only girl in the boys' club, but when a couple of East Coasters show up at the local skatepark, she finds an ally and a friend in Jen Hughes. How long can they ride the wave of skating's rise, and what will they do when too good to be true ends up being a lie?
Relationships: Background Judy/Steve, Judy Hale/Jen Harding, and Jen/Ted he's here and alive in this so sorry everyone
Comments: 24
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> bluebluebaby's special interest for 20 years but make it gay!!! 
> 
> (i'm just truly a skate history nerd and I thought skating would be a fun way to play with Jen and Judy and analyze their characters because i'm an insufferable dork. hope there's something in here for you, tho!!!)

_ July 1979  _

Judy Hale wishes  _ she’d _ get handcuffed, for once. 

Not that she wants to go to jail (visiting her mom inside was more than enough to dissuade that notion), but it would be nice to be treated as an  _ equal _ when the pool sessions get busted. 

Instead, she’s just sitting on the curb, while Steve is facedown on the pavement with a knee on his back, yelling about how his family knows the police chief, and since fucking when do they let ladies be cops anyways? 

The beat cop (her nameplate says “PEREZ”) a serious woman who’s probably younger than she looks (likely not too much older than Judy, 19 and still riding a skateboard every day like she’s never going to grow up) twists his arm a little tighter and speaks into her radio, muttering “I’ve got a Steve Wood here, arrested for trespassing.”. 

She’s clearly disappointed by the answer she gets and gives Steve a little extra shove before letting him go. 

“I’ve been instructed to let you off with a warning. Stop breaking into private property or next time it’s spending the night in jail.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” Steve huffs, pushing his long hair behind his ears and picking himself up off the ground. 

“Hey, I just think it’s really great the example you’re setting for the community,” Judy smiles at her, as she walks back to the patrol car, “It’s so important for young girls to see themselves represented in all professions.” 

“That include being burnout skateboarders?” 

Judy nods earnestly (she’s got a stack of fan mail at home to back that claim up), but Officer Perez scoffs, clearly unamused. 

Which is a bummer, but Steve is fuming, so evangelizing for women in skateboarding will have to wait. 

“See, this is why bringing chicks to the spot is a bad idea. All the other guys hopped the fence just fine, but I had to get you a boost up and we got busted.” 

“I’m sorry,” Judy frowns (though it’s not like it’s her  _ fault _ she’s only 5’2”). “At least you were able to call in that favor? Maybe we should just stick with the park for a while.” 

“That’s such a girl answer, Jesus.”

Steve’s already back on his board, pushing down the asphalt, back towards the TKG shop. Judy scrambles to catch up to him, to keep the conversation going as they cruise down the quiet streets of Newport Beach. She tries to make her case without angering him too much (it means the difference between crashing together at his place and trying to find a spot to sleep under the pier). 

“I mean, we skate for free and they  _ are  _ our sponsor. And the new bowl has the coping you like, anyways.” 

“That’s not what skating is about, Jude, it’s about… saying fuck you to authority and breaking shit, you know?” 

(Judy wants to point out that the deck Steve is riding on is funded by money his parents put into the shop, that he’s bought his way into the industry, even if he’s an adequate rider. But she wants a roof over her head tonight more.) 

“Yeah, guess it’s just my feminine energy, bringing us down again,” she sighs, half sarcastic but knowing he won’t pick that up. 

“That’s why you gotta stick with me, right? I push you to be better.” 

She’d gotten some offers, last year, from some of the big guys— Sims and Nash— but Steve had made it clear that leaving TKG would mean having rumors about her spread in every corner of the industry, being shunned from every party or secret session. And yeah, the extra money or exposure would’ve been nice, but not worth the risk of losing everything she’s worked so hard for. Besides, her bills are paid, mostly. She’s doing alright, and Steve’s a good guy when he’s not mad.

He gets mad more and more these days, though.

“Well, maybe  _ tomorrow _ we can go to the park, then, yeah? Your airs are looking  _ really _ solid in the half-pipe.” 

“If you wanna see me put on a show, baby, we’ll do that tomorrow.” 

Steve slides back into charmer mode, and Judy knows that he’ll make it up to her tonight, on the couch in the back of the shop. 

She thinks their relationship is kind of like skating, sometimes. A little bit of pain is a given, sure, but the payoff is like nothing else in the world. 

_

The whole TKG team is at Beach Haven skatepark by late morning, commandeering the bowl and intimidating the hell out of the more casual park riders. There’s a photographer here today, capturing stills for an article in a magazine about the crew. The writer, a young woman called Karen, is eager but clueless about what they’re doing, so it falls on Judy to explain (after the guys, as expected, completely brush her off). 

She narrates Karen through Nick Prager’s flowy frontside carve grinds, Steve’s brother Ben’s labored Rock n’ Rolls, Steve’s floaty backside airs. Eventually, it’s Judy’s turn to skate, so she opts for her contest run, explaining to Karen exactly what and when she is going to do on each wall, but noting that the frontside air at the end is the one to watch for. 

(It never gets old, that feeling of weightlessness. It’s the closest thing Judy’s ever known to flying.)

She’d started out as a surf rat, spending long days on the beach as a 12 year old when her mom wasn’t around, discovering that whatever punishment the waves had to offer was preferable to the inevitable fallout of returning home. She and her friends had rolled around on skateboards on the days when the waves were dead, but it wasn’t until Judy started moving from foster home to foster home that she realized a skateboard was a hell of a lot easier to take with her than a surfboard, and that even when she wasn’t close to the water, she could bomb hills or carve steep banks. 

Surfers move with the waves, respect the ocean, but skaters? They fight back against the concrete, grinding metal trucks against pool coping, skidding and sliding their wheels across cement. Judy might not always be able to stand up for herself, but on four wheels, she has a reputation for being fearless. 

Judy had met Steve and his family when she was 16, and pool skating was in its early glory days. The Woods came from money, but they were generous enough with it, sponsoring other locals with their shop, paying entry fees for contests, promising Judy the world, and all she’d had to do was show up and skate. 

And Steve? He was charming at the beginning, terribly so, and rebellious in that James Dean kind of way, always pushing Judy into situations she never would’ve chosen for herself, but that worked out fine for the most part. It’s been a storybook romance with him, except for the parts where he asks her to stay away from him at contests, to let the girls watching him skate think he’s single. But Judy’s never really had anything to herself; she’s good at sharing. 

Karen finishes her reporting with a couple of pull quotes from the team, before heading down to the office to talk with the park’s owner and manager, Wayne. He’s got more of a youth pastor energy than hardcore aggression, but it works: he’s a nurturer, bringing out the best in skaters by believing in them, not bullying them. 

(Maybe that’s why Judy likes skating the park over breaking into people’s backyards.) 

After Judy says goodbye to Karen (offering to teach her to skate anytime she wants), she returns to the deck of the bowl to find there’s been an energetic shift. 

An unknown skater has interloped on their session, and he appears to be a snake, dropping in on top of everyone else’s runs, showing off unnecessarily, altogether breaking every rule of skatepark etiquette. 

A blonde woman stands off to the side, legs crossed at the ankles, thumbs hooked into the pockets of her jeans. She wears a worn white t-shirt and Chuck Taylors— Judy’s hopeful that the outfit means she’s another girl skater, but she doesn’t look too invested in what’s happening in the bowl. Still, the only way to find out is to ask. 

“So… goofy or regular?” She flashes her trademark friendly smile. 

It takes the woman a moment to react, clearly not expecting anyone to talk to her. When she notices Judy’s proximity, she looks up. 

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” 

Her Brooklyn accent grinds against Judy’s ears like the scrape of trucks against pool coping. 

(An equally addictive sound, she thinks.) 

“I’m goofy,” Judy offers. 

“Yeah, I can fucking tell.” 

Judy’s pretty sure this girl hasn’t seen her skate, so maybe it’s in the way she walks that shows she rides right foot forward? Or, the more likely option, that this girl is just casually insulting her. 

“You don’t skate, do you?” 

The girl rolls her eyes. 

“Do I look like a dude?” 

“If I had to guess I’d say you were one hundred percent a woman,” Judy jokes, hoping to get some sort of a non-hostile reaction. “I’m Judy, by the way.” 

“Jen,” the woman replies, making no move to retract her hands from her pockets. 

“That your boyfriend?” Judy nods towards the new guy, still doing his best to monopolize the bowl. 

“Yeah,” Jen sighs, clearly wishing he wasn’t, so she wouldn’t have to be here, right now. 

“He’s kind of being a dick,” Judy blurts, unable to keep the thought that’s been in the back of her mind for the last ten minutes from coming out of her mouth.

Jen laughs, unexpectedly, and it’s like she’s a whole different person. 

“Hey, Ted!” She shouts, leaning towards the bowl for the first time all day, “Quit bein’ a fucking dick! Everyone knows you can ride a stupid fucking skateboard!” 

She punctuates it by flipping him off and he glowers at her, but the callout totally works; Ted retreats to the deck, lets the natural order of a bowl session resume, and starts actually befriending the guys instead of trying to show them up. 

Judy wants to know more about Jen, wants to hear how a native New Yorker ended up in Laguna Beach of all places, but Nick’s calling her over to meet the new guy and show him a thing or two about how to skate a goddamn bowl. Ted explains that he grew up here in Laguna, skating as a tween, but he’s been away in New York for school and he heard California was now the place to be for skateboarding, so he moved home with his girlfriend. Judy hasn’t ever really thought about east coast skaters; California is practically the center of the universe, with its drained swimming pools and plentiful concrete parks. She’s never gone further than San Francisco for a contest. But apparently the wide distribution of the skate mags means people are skating  _ everywhere _ now, and girls in Florida and New York and Virginia look up to skaters like  _ her _ . 

It’s a far cry from sleeping in her mom’s car as a kid. 

Ted, apparently, doesn’t think girls can skate (maybe that’s where Jen got that idea from), so the other guys on the team egg Judy on, and while she’s not really into showing people up, she gives into the pressure, leaning into the ease of skating her home bowl, knowing every pocket and wall, the exact speed of the coping, which hips float her high and which have sent her slamming hard into the flat too many times. Once she’s really back into the swing of the session, the pull of girltalk feels less compelling, though she can sense Jen’s eyes on her as she rides, centripetal force and the grip of urethane keeping her wheels on the curved walls of the bowl as she carves. 

No matter how hard she pumps into concrete, it never  _ ever _ gives. 

It’s good to have constants like that in life.

Judy doesn’t get nervous as a rule; she learned to skate under pressure and the watchful eye of contest judges  _ years  _ ago. But as she pops out onto the deck, Jen catches her eye and grins approvingly. 

And Judy? 

Judy’s legs _ shake _ . 

There’s been an energetic shift, indeed. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ditches and bitches, baby!!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: drug use, mentions of alcohol

They’re at a drainage ditch today, taking advantage of one of the silver linings of droughts and water shortages. Ted’s endeared himself enough with the guys to get a spot on the team (amateur, but that’s better than nothing), and he bombs the hills confidently, making up with speed what he lacks in flow. 

Jen’s here, too, along with Nick’s latest girlfriend, but whereas Bambi oohs and ahs over the spectacle, she looks miserable. 

And angry. 

Judy’s in the session, but well, banks aren’t her favorite thing, and Steve’s having a day where every time he slams he takes it out on her, so she walks up the other side of the ditch, to where the girls are sprawled out. 

“Hey.” 

Jen looks up, suspicious. 

“Shouldn’t you be like,  _ totally shredding _ , _ dude _ ?” She affects a California accent so ridiculous Judy can’t help but giggle. 

“I’m bored,” Judy shrugs.

“You seem like the type of person who doesn’t believe in boredom. Like, so overflowing with creativity that’s not an option.” She points to the intricate design Judy’s drawn on her griptape in paint pen for emphasis. 

“Fine, you caught me,” Judy raises her hands in surrender. “You look very much like you don’t want to be here.” 

“And what? You thought you’d  _ talk _ to me about it?” 

Jen crosses her arms, raises an eyebrow.

Judy’s never really learned to meet force with force, but she’s gotten really fucking good at the art of persuasion. 

“Nah, I thought I’d teach you to skate. So you don’t have to watch anymore.” 

Jen’s jaw drops. 

“You’re _ serious _ ?” 

“As a heart attack,” Judy winks, grabbing Jen by the hand and walking her down the ditch, at an angle, so when they reach the flat they’re at a distance from the guys. 

“What makes you think I can do this?” 

“You move with a natural grace,” Judy shrugs, which is like half true and half her trying to psych Jen up enough to at least _ try.  _ “Have you ever ridden at all before?” 

“When I was a kid, sure, but I can’t like, carve or anything like that.” 

“You can’t carve  _ yet _ ,” Judy smiles,”but lucky for you you have a champion teaching you.” 

Jen rolls her eyes. 

“If I do it once will you stop bugging me?” 

Judy’s willing to take that gamble, so she agrees to the conditions. She works with Jen first just on getting a solid push, determining that Jen skates regular (“o _ f fucking course I do I’m not a goofball, or whatever like you _ ”) and that remembering how to roll on the flat ground comes back as quickly as riding a bike. 

“Okay, so… how do I go from rolling around down here to going up and down the bank?” 

(Jen is trying to play it cool, but Judy can see the gleam in her eye that means she’s not going home today until she learns this.) 

“Okay, so I think of it as like… painting with your board. Draw the most natural arc, follow that beautiful line that gravity wants to give you, you know?” 

Judging by her blank stare, Jen doesn’t know. 

“Yeah, no, I don’t draw or any shit like that.” 

“Well… what  _ do _ you do?” 

“I’m a dancer.” 

She strikes a pose, tongue-in-cheek, and maybe Judy’s comment about natural grace was closer to truth than bullshit. 

“Okay then… how about… you’re dancing a duet with the bank- you pump up to the peak, then let it catch you for a moment before riding away downhill.” 

Jen wrinkles her nose at the metaphor, but her eyes narrow as she sizes up the bank. 

Her push is a threat and a promise, and she shoots up the steep edge of the ditch, before losing her balance and running off the front of her board. 

Judy’s about to offer some advice, but Jen’s face says “ _ fuck you, I will do this myself if it kills me _ ,” and she takes another stab at it. 

This time, Jen gets the carve, but overshoots on her heelside, so she catches an edge and falls backward,  _ hard _ . 

  
  


“Okay, maybe we should’ve started with backside carves,” Judy grimaces, as she offers her a hand up. 

Jen dusts herself off, noting a bit of road rash on her left forearm but doing nothing to address it, and tries again. 

It’s then, when she lands the carve and rides away, that Judy know’s she’s gotten the bug. 

Jen can’t fight a grin as she pushes back up towards Judy. 

“Okay, I’m starting to get what you like about this shit so much.” 

“You looked good! Style from day one, not everyone has that,” Judy nods sagely (trying not to turn her head towards Ted ). 

“I’m gonna go again.” 

They spend the rest of the day that way, Jen learning to carve frontside and backside, Judy practicing a bertslide here and there, but more finding joy in the teaching, watching Jen fall in love more with skating with every run. 

At one point the guys finally notice them, but they’re too absorbed in their own lines to interrupt. When the sun starts to fall, and the session winds down, Jen looks exhausted and elated, and very much like she wants to be there. 

( _ Watching someone fall in love with something makes you fall a bit in love with them _ , Judy thinks later that night, lying in bed and thinking about the look on Jen’s face as she rode away clean)

_

They don’t skate every day that week; Judy has to work a few hours at the shop, and she’s got some designs she wants to get ready for the next run of boards, so she holes up in her studio, too. Steve’s in one of his phases where he’s out late more than not, but Judy doesn’t mind, really, she likes having alone time to paint every now and then. 

She’s just about to close up the shop on Sunday afternoon when Jen comes in, looking sheepish. 

“Hey, stranger!” Judy beams, hopping off of the counter she’s been sitting on cross legged, sketching. 

“Um, so, I think I want to buy a board?” 

“I know I got you hooked,” Judy laughs, thrilled at the feeling of being right. “I have an employee discount, I’ll hook you up.” 

She assembles Jen’s board, helping her pick the different components, explaining the pros and cons of each part. Jen chooses Judy’s pro model for her deck, and Judy’s heart soars at the thought of her name being under Jen’s feet. 

Jen’s clearly happy with the setup— she pushes around the shop floor a few times to feel it out— but her eyes are dark today, heavy lidded in fatigue. 

“You okay? You look like you haven’t got much sleep.” 

Jen shrugs. 

“What else is new? I feel like I never sleep anymore.” 

“Hard to be away from the noise of the city?” 

“Something like that…” 

Judy’s pretty much always been an insomniac, as long as she can remember. It’s never been too much of an issue, since skaters are averse to early mornings, as a rule (one more advantage over surfing; no timing of tides to worry about).

“Well, if you can’t sleep, I’m at Beach Haven almost every night around midnight. Wayne gave me a key when I told him I kept weird hours, and since I don’t share it, I’ve been able to keep it a secret. You should join me.” 

“Wouldn’t that end the secret?” 

Judy shrugs. 

“Sisters before misters, or something like that.” 

Judy sees Jen eye her new board, thinking about how much she wants to ride it, make it hers. 

“Will you be there tonight?” 

_

Jen rushes to the park gate at 12:01, out of breath but excited. 

“Sorry! Ted is usually passed out from his evening six pack by eleven, but he got behind schedule tonight, ha.” 

“He doesn’t know where you are?” 

“Nah, out like a light. He’ll probably mumble in his sleep when I get back, but he won’t remember.” 

Judy unlocks the gate and ushers them inside. It’s a full moon tonight, almost bright enough that they don’t need any illumination, but Wayne had given her a tour of the fuse box when he’d granted her this key, and she turns on one set of lights, making the dark pockets of the bowl visible. It’s a massive park, with a sprawling snake run and multiple pools, but this is her favorite, and she wants to share it with Jen. 

They start low and slow, and Judy teaches Jen how to feel the wall of the bowl the same way she had the bank. Gravity moves quicker here, and she slips and slides out more than a few times, but by the end of the night she’s turning halfway up the walls, flowing and keeping her speed. 

Judy finds herself yawning and checks her watch: 3:15 am. 

“How are you feeling?” 

Jen looks up from a backside carve and as she rolls to a stop in the flat bottom, considers the question. 

“I think I’m actually really fucking tired.” 

“Yeah, me, too. It totally works as an insomnia cure, right?” 

Jen smiles. 

“ _ Totally. _ ” 

They meet like that, almost every night for a month. Jen isn’t around anymore for daytime sessions (“ _ I got a fucking job and I fucking hate it _ ” is the only explanation Judy gets), and Judy finds her heart’s not as in it anymore when it’s all guys. 

It’s like… she never knew that she could skate with someone who  _ actually  _ viewed her as an equal, not just “pretty good for a chick.” And now that she knows what that feels like, nothing else can compare. 

She breaks the first rule of midnight skate club, and give Jen her own key, just in case she comes all the way out to the park and Judy is busy. It’s a risk, but she knows in her bones Jen won’t betray her trust. 

Steve notices the hours she’s been putting in at the park, tells her “damn, baby, you’ve been working hard to impress me, huh?” 

The sex with him is still easy; they move together like a well-practiced doubles run, and the big finish never fails. But afterwards, leaning on his chest and listening to his heavy breathing as he falls asleep, Judy finds the air suddenly stuffy. 

She realizes she’s craving the ocean breeze and the soft glow of halogen light. 

But more than that, she yearns for the sound of Jen’s voice, the patter of her heels against the transition as she swings her legs back and forth and they sit on the deck, talking about  _ everything. _

“My mom’s dead,” Jen says out of the blue, a few days later. 

“Oh. Bummer.” 

(Judy’s a little stoned. She’s usually better with her words, but introducing Jen to the world of high skating is like, of utmost importance.) 

  
  


“She died two years ago. Cancer. Anyways, that’s why I agreed to come to fucking California. Because she’s dead.” 

“I’m glad you’re here.”

It wasn’t really the right thing to say, but it wasn’t the wrong one, so they just sit in silence until Judy thinks of something else. 

“My mom’s in prison.” 

“Oh shit. That’s gnarly.” 

(Jen’s started to pick up slang in earnest now, although it still sounds heavy and foreign in her Brooklyn accent.) 

“It is what it is,” Judy shrugs, able to let go of her guilt through the miracle of marijuana. 

“We’re like… the fuckin’ boxcar children of skateboarding,” Jen muses. 

“Box carve children?”

Jen groans. 

“Ted’s gonna propose.” 

It’s like time speeds up all of a sudden. Judy feels kind of sick and excited at the same time. 

“Really? When? How do you know? What are you gonna say?” 

“I told him I refuse to get married until I’m 23 but I’ll be 22 in November, so he’s probably gonna try for a year-long engagement.” 

Judy nods. Makes sense. 

“Do you want to get married?” 

Jen inhales, long and slow, blowing smoke rings. 

“I don’t  _ not  _ want to get married. I mean, it’s a way to get a family, right?” 

“Steve’s never gonna propose.” 

Jen laughs, _ loud, _ and Judy’s kind of shocked by it. 

“What?” 

“Sorry, it’s just…” 

She trails off, but Judy knows what she’s thinking. 

_ If he can’t even be faithful to you now, why would you marry him?  _

She’s wondered the same thing a dozen times, but she still daydreams about it, of taking his name, earning a place at a crowded table on Thanksgiving. 

It’s stupid, but that doesn’t make her want it any less. 

“Hey, Jen?”

“Hmmmm?” 

“There’s a contest next month in Santa Barbara. You should enter. You’re actually getting really good, really fast. I’d be mad if I didn’t like you so much.” 

Jen scoffs, but Judy knows the seed has been planted in her mind. 

Judy’s always had a knack for gardening. 

**Author's Note:**

> Judy in this is partially inspired by real life badasses Peggy Oki and Cindy Whitehead— there's a really rich history of Women pro's in the early days of skating (before an almost total absence in the 80's-90's). We're in a golden age rn of women and trans/nonbinary skaters shining bc of social media and i just think it's the fucking greatest!!! bless u for reading this word vomit <3


End file.
